Thursday, July 6, 2017

"Samsung unveiled plans Wednesday morning to open a new appliance factory in South Carolina, a move the electronics giant said will create 954 jobs in the Palmetto State over the next three years.

At a Washington event with company executives, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross praised the company for opening the $380-million plant in Newberry County and promoted President Trump's economic agenda, which includes nudging global firms to expand their manufacturing operations on American soil.

'President Trump and the Department of Commerce will continue to support these kinds of investments,' he said before news cameras at a hotel near the White House.

However, the Samsung deal was in the works before the election. The Commerce Department, meanwhile, was not directly involved in the negotiations, a department representative said. . .

Samsung first considered setting up shop in the United States about three years ago, the company said, and started talks with South Carolina last fall."

"Thirty years ago, as Donald Trump gave what is widely considered to be the first campaign speech of his career, he criticized one country above all for cheating the United States in trade: Japan.

On Thursday, Japan took on the mantle of the global rules-based trading system, as it sidestepped a failing trade agreement with the United States to forge a historic new pact with the European Union.

Leaders from Japan and the European Union on Thursday announced their agreement in principle on the broad strokes of a trade deal that will cover nearly 30 percent of the global economy, 10 percent of the world's population and 40 percent of global trade.

The deal crafts a trading bloc roughly the same size as that established by the North American Free Trade Agreement, a 1994 deal between the United States, Mexico and Canada.

Coming on the eve of the Group of 20 meeting of global leaders in Hamburg, Germany, the announcement appeared to be a calculated rebuke of both the United States, which has spurned global trade agreements in favor of more protectionist policies under President Trump, and Great Britain, which voted to leave the European Union last year. . .

The deal will be a heavy blow to American producers of these goods, by making U.S.-made goods relatively more expensive and less competitive in the major markets of Japan and Europe.

"Trump is known for his tendency to deny his role in controversial events. . . While the nation is waiting to learn the truth about what Trump has or has not said and done, his stubborn denial reveals a lack of social reasoning typical of aggressive children.

Public accounts or explanations of negative events provide us with important insights about social-cognitive maturity. . .

Not only does Trump flatly deny almost every accusation leveled against him, but he also claims no personal responsibility for problems. Instead he blames others, most recently the media and the White House staff. Refusal to accept personal responsibility and a tendency to blame others are indeed trademarks of aggressive children. In fact, our research shows that aggressive children are much quicker to infer hostile intent in ambiguous situations and lash out in revenge. Blaming others is a self-enhancing defense mechanism: It protects positive self-views.

In addition to protecting his ego, Trump also tries to enhance his self-worth. What makes him look childlike are his unsubstantiated claims about his popularity. Despite the verifiable evidence, he repeatedly refers to his unprecedented electoral college victory and the unmatched size of crowds at his inauguration.

Trump’s use of self-enhancement tactics also helps explain why he feels he has been treated worse and more unfairly than any other president in history. Despite their (short-lived) popularity, most bullies are hypersensitive to negative feedback — and ironically feel mistreated.

Revealingly, in his interview with his biographer Michael D’Antonio, Trump says he is the same person as he was in first grade. He may well also be very similar to the person he was in middle school: Indeed, there are many parallels between Trump’s behavior and the facts and findings of developmental science on social reasoning and behavior."

A political media allows an ignoramus to pontificate on things he knows nothing about.

Here is a case study:

"We forget sometimes that President Trump’s political rhetoric was forged not over years of policymaking or in discussions with experts on foreign policy and domestic issues, but in weekly phone interviews with “Fox and Friends.” Before he declared his candidacy, the real estate developer and TV personality would appear on the program every Monday morning, weighing in on the issues of the day as the hosts offered their now-familiar lack of criticism of his musings. . .

[The timeline of The Donalds ignorant statements]

But, then, he’s already given himself an out on talking about what he intends to do. During a news conference in February, Trump insisted to reporters that, in essence, his plans for North Korea were none of their business.

'I don’t have to tell you. I don’t want to be one of these guys that say, ‘Yes, here’s what we’re going to do.’ I don’t have to do that. I don’t have to tell you what I’m going to do in North Korea,' he said. 'I don’t have to tell you what I’m going to do in North Korea. And I don’t have to tell you what I’m going to do with Iran. You know why? Because they shouldn’t know. And eventually, you guys are going to get tired of asking that question.'

The president’s current conundrum is twofold. First, there’s no easy solution. Second, Trump promised that there was one.

Had his policy been crafted by a team other than Fox’s early-morning talk show hosts, that second problem might not exist."

But this plan may lead to a war in which millions of people are killed.

The Donald play a tough American President on American TV, but I guess North Korea hasn't been watching the show.

"Donald Trump made a bold pronouncement in the weeks before he became president that is not aging well.

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

North Korea just stated that it is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the U.S. It won't happen!
5:05 PM - 2 Jan 2017

The U.S. government confirmed last night that North Korea successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic missile, crossing a chilling threshold and underscoring Trump’s failure to change the trajectory of dictator Kim Jong Un’s nuclear program over the past six months."

"If [Trump] "thought a show of force would deter North Korea, he thought wrong.
If anything, the president’s previous saber-rattling has only driven
the regime to accelerate its efforts to build a nuclear weapon capable
of striking the mainland United States. . .

Trump administration officials have been saying for months now that 'the era of strategic patience is over,' a reference to Obama’s approach, but no one has explained what exactly will replace it."

UPDATE: "With the Republican campaign to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act now set to enter its final, frenzied push, the Indianopolis Star reports that the Indiana GOP attempted a stunt that was supposed to provide Republicans with more ammunition against the law. But the stunt went awry:

The Indiana Republican Party posed a question to Facebook on Monday: 'What’s your Obamacare horror story? Let us know.'

The responses were unexpected.

'My sister finally has access to affordable quality care and treatment for her diabetes.'

'My father’s small business was able to insure its employees for the first time ever. #thanksObama'

'Love Obamacare!'

'The only horror in the story is that Republicans might take it away.'…

By 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, the Indiana GOP’s post collected more than 1,500 comments, the vast majority in support of Obamacare. . .

[W]hile the rate of pro-ACA postings should obviously not be taken as a scientific indicator of public opinion, this episode also neatly captures another larger truth about why it is proving so hard for Republicans to repeal the law: It has helped untold numbers of people, and the GOP bill would largely reverse that.

This is admittedly a simple and obvious point, yet the extraordinary lengths to which Republicans are going to obscure this basic reality continue to elude sufficient recognition. If you think about it, pretty much every major lie that President Trump and Republicans are telling right now to get their repeal-and-replace bill passed is designed to cover it up."

"'Cutting taxes' is a perpetually appealing prospect for voters, but taking away the things those taxes pay for is far more fraught. And as Republicans consider whether their health-care bill puts their anti-tax philosophy into practice, the route they take will say a lot about who’s really in control of their party. . .

It’s an [situation for the] party that used Obamacare repeal as its unifying standard for years, but there's a gap between campaigning and governance. 'Getting government out of people’s lives' is a popular piece of rhetoric, but “getting government benefits out of people’s hands” is far harder."

UPDATE II: "Foreign ministries around the world are filled with anticipation over what will happen when Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump meet for the first time at the G20 summit. But veteran U.S. spies who’ve studied manipulation tactics, particularly from their Russian counterparts, are confident they know what’s going to unfold.

Putin, a former KGB operations officer, will not just be practicing interpersonal diplomacy, they say. He’ll be putting his tradecraft as a spy to work. His main asset: Trump’s massive, delicate ego.

It won’t just be the expected flattery, from the spies’ perspective, though flattery is key to dealing with the “sociopathic narcissist” tendencies one ex-CIA interrogator sees in Trump. Putin is likely to stoke Trump’s ire, encourage him against his perceived enemies and validate his inclinations – particularly the ones that move U.S. policy in the directions Putin wants."

UPDATE: Read the Washington Post, Phone taps, power plays and sarcasm: What it’s like to negotiate with Vladimir Putin, which notes: "As President Trump prepares for his first face-to-face meeting this week with Putin, in Hamburg, those who have negotiated with the Russian leader caution that Trump must be ready for a shrewd, well-prepared and implacable adversary."

"American presidents have a long history of trying to play personal politics with Russian leaders. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was convinced that he could charm Joseph Stalin. Ronald Reagan trusted his rapport with Mikhail Gorbachev to such an extent that he imagined the two of them joining to eliminate all nuclear weapons. Bill Clinton spent long chunks of quality time with Boris Yeltsin. And George W. Bush, of course, believed that he was 'able to get a sense of [Putin’s] soul.'

This faith in the power of schmoozing has deep roots in American politics, where a lot depends on negotiation, dialogue and dealmaking. But Moscow doesn’t work that way. Russia’s long authoritarian traditions condition it to views its relations with other countries in terms of pure power.

Russia does not have friends. It has competitors and it has vassals. Vassals are countries that pay rhetorical tribute to Moscow and follow its lead on everything that matters — usually because they are deeply dependent on Russia for security, economic support or energy supplies. It’s no coincidence that its current vassal states — such as Belarus, Armenia and Kazakhstan — are themselves corrupt autocracies, which makes it easier for the Kremlin to work with them.

Competitors, by contrast, are to be combated or tolerated. Toleration is possible but it always comes at a price. Most importantly, such a competitor must effectively eschew any criticism of Russia’s domestic affairs and pledge to respect Russia’s freedom of action within its sphere of influence abroad. Once this principle is established, the two rivals can cooperate on other issues where they share common interests. This is the sort of relationship Russia cultivates with its frenemy China, and it is, presumably, how the Kremlin envisages its ideal policy toward the United States under Trump.

Putin wants Washington to accept its role as a meddler in Russia’s self-declared sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. . .

Putin also wants the United States to lift the sanctions imposed in retaliation for Russia’s annexation of Crimea, thus restoring Russia’s freedom to act within the post-Soviet space as it sees fit. . .

Meanwhile, Moscow continues to evade responsibility for its interference in the U.S. presidential election. . .

So yes, we could certainly have a closer relationship with Russia if we wanted one — what Trump might even call a 'friendship,' though Putin wouldn’t look at it that way. But such a deal would come at a huge cost. It would jolt our already shaky ties with our allies, allow Russia license to continue undermining Western democratic institutions and call into question our commitment to our own democratic values — not to mention it would reward Assad for the deaths of about half a million of his own citizens.

Russia doesn’t want us to be its friend; it wants us to be its enabler. Trump may be incapable of understanding this (and if he is, the result could be a disaster). But the rest of us should never forget it."

UPDATE: "Putin, a former KGB officer who specialized in what the Russians call
“political technology,” is the arch manipulator—“deft at psyching people
out” as a former U.S. official put it—and his meetings with foreign
leaders are frequently notable occasions. Putin brought his Labrador,
Konni, to his first meeting with Angela Merkel, who has a lifelong fear
of dogs. In his first meeting with Nicholas Sarkozy, he personally threatened
to 'smash' the French leader 'to pieces,' leaving him dazed and
confused in the press conference that followed. Famously, Putin bonded
with George W. Bush over their shared Christianity by telling him a
story about how his crucifix was blessed by his mother in Jerusalem and
was subsequently the only item to survive a fire in the family Dacha.
This tale infamously prompted Bush to say he saw into Putin’s soul. . .

Trump is no ordinary president. He is unique in every way. He is unique ideologically in that he is the only U.S. president to object to the postwar liberal international order, especially on trade, alliances and values. He is unique temperamentally, becoming a sycophant when praised and an enemy when slighted. His foreign counterparts will remember how he was manipulated by Saudi Arabia into siding with Riyadh against Qatar over the objections of his secretary of state. And he is unique in how he processes information. He has a short attention span, a limited interest in detailed briefings and a fondness for cable news. The pattern is fairly clear by now. Most of the time, his mainstream advisers can box him in, but it is hardest when he is center stage, either in a crisis or on a foreign trip. Poland and Hamburg provide the next test. "

But "Mr. Trump’s advisers have yet to devise a set of talking points for the closely watched meeting, a process made all the more difficult given the cloud of suspicion hanging over the president and his own propensity to go off-script.

It is rare and potentially risky for an American president to go into such a consequential meeting with another world leader — particularly one like Mr. Putin, a forceful and persuasive figure — with so little preparation on what policy objectives he wants to pursue, said Michael A. McFaul, who served as the United States ambassador to Russia under President Barack Obama.

'Mr. Trump may not be preparing in terms of deliverables or outcomes that he seeks, but you can bet that Mr. Putin is,' said Mr. McFaul, who as the chief Russia specialist at the National Security Council in 2009 prepared Mr. Obama for his first meeting with then-President Dmitry A. Medvedev of Russia.

'The big danger with Trump and his instincts is that he often defines a ‘good meeting’ or a friendly encounter as a positive outcome of a meeting with a head of state, and with Putin — where we have a big agenda, and a lot of it’s adversarial — he’s got that backward,' Mr. McFaul said."

"Moscow believes its leader, ex-spy master Vladimir Putin, can extract major concessions from President Donald Trump when the two meet for the first time next week, European officials tell The Daily Beast.

The officials say their intelligence indicates Putin thinks he can outmaneuver Trump at the G-20 summit, playing on promises of cooperation on areas like counterterrorism to win concessions like a reduction in the raft of sanctions against Russia."

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